The essence of Buddhist practice is to bring everything onto the path. Every experience becomes an opportunity for awakening.

Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is that buddhas recognize their nature while sentient beings fail to recognize it.

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment.

The Buddha's teaching is a middle way between all extremes, between eternalism and annihilationism, between self-indulgence and self-torture.

If you see certainty in that which is uncertain, you are bound to suffer.

To live – is that not enough? To love – is that not everything?

Understanding at the intellectual level is not enough. There must be experience at the actual level.

The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

The six realms of existence are like a dream, why build a prison for yourself?

If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

Life is available only in the present moment.

The Buddha taught that wealth does not bring happiness and security. The pursuit of wealth is a matter of living in balance.

The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

We practice to learn how to let go, not how to increase our holding on to things.

The practice of mindfulness transforms the mind from a place of suffering into an instrument of enlightenment.

The menu is not the meal.

Those who know emptiness, know impermanence. Those who know impermanence, know non-self. Those who know non-self, know peace.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

The ultimate source of happiness is not money and power, but warm-heartedness.

True love is not for the faint-hearted.

Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest.

As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.

Each breath is a new beginning, a fresh opportunity to awaken.

The first step toward faith is to admit that we don't know everything.

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.

The three characteristics - impermanence, suffering, and non-self - are not philosophical concepts but aspects of experience to be directly observed.

The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, or change.